Bit of an investment this one, as it was
£11.99! I passed on it at Christmas for reasons of price against available
budget, but the other day A) I had a spare tenner to fritter away on a tank in a
tin, or even a tank not in a tin and B) people had broken the seal on a couple
of the aforementioned tank tins, so the contents (light-feeling and anonymous
back in December) were open to a quick inspection, and I would then have been
failing - both this and the Airfixfigs Blogs - had I turned-away
again!
There you go . . . a tin, with a tank; a
tank in a tin, there's really no doubt about the matter! The tank wrapped in a
bubble-sock and the figures in a little stash-bag! All in a tin.
The customer information panel on the base
is a firmly glued card sheet, almost certainly over the printed date of a
partner importer elsewhere or the factory
and the Funtime Gifts branding
doesn't seem to match what may be that partner/originating-factory's logo with
seems to be an 'M' but might be an MW cypher?
The tank (from the tin it's come in) is
described as a M41 Walker Bulldog
and apart from a road-wheel missing in each side seems to be a reasonable model
of one in a slightly over-1:72nd scale, maybe closer to 1:70th or even 1:64?
It comes with 12 copies of the Airfix '2nd version' US Marines, which,
through the bag, in the store (Waterstone's
have them at the moment) looked as if they were Hornby-supplied, but which upon unpacking were revealed to be
good-quality piracies; four each of three poses, manufactured in a PVC-like
polymer with some of the properties of a polyethylene.
Further to previous posts, you can see here
that a skilled copyist has ensured the pantograph produced figures of exactly
the same size, but some detail has been lost by the vibration of the
cutting-head/burr-drill which has not be re-etched in afterward (by an
engraver/finisher), the Tank in a Tin
figure is on the right in both shots.
In the powering-up I encountered a few
problems which those of you chaffing to rush out and buy one of your-own Tank in a Tin's need to be aware of;
The AAA (Triple-A) battery is NOT supplied
and will need to be sourced. When you remove the screws and split the model,
you will find that the middle gear in the drive-chain (A) pops out of it's
housing, slip it back in by all means, but don't try tightening the
motor-housing screws (C) (as I did - it'll just hold everything too tightly),
because the spigots (B) actually hold the gear-shaft in place during normal
operation!
Also the PVC glue used to seal the
track-join will have filled a few of the sprocket-tooth holes in the tracks,
you may wish to open them-up again with a hot needle. For similar reasons (of
more realistic running) the sprooket-teeth may need a bit of flash removed and
some of the wheels have mould-gate (incorrectly; 'sprue') residue which can be
trimmed off.
Finally; if you've not made a note of it
before or during the above 'base-workshop' phase, the track-pad 'arrows' point
to where the tank is going above the wheels and where it's been below the
wheels (yellow arrows) when you need to refit them.
It's a nice little runner - albeit in one direction only - and I'll try to
do a video at some point - when the weather improves! The three-point
drive-chain reducing the speed to a decent 'scale' speed - it's runs-over the
infantry in a satisfyingly slow fashion!
I love a bit of detective work, and I love
a bit of a challenge, so when I thought I recognised the silhouetted figures on
the side of the tin I had to try and reproduce them!
They were the SoldierWW2 font (which worked so poorly on last year's PW Show announcement - only three months 'till the next one!) I've posted a link to before , but most of them had been reversed (all but the two
underlined ones - both 'duplicates'), so I had to type them into a word
document, colour the page appropriately, take screencapchas, put the .jpg's
back into the word document as picture-elements, flip/reverse them, screencap'
again and remove the two which had to be the right way round and add them as
actual font-element/additional over-text's to the picture, and then save!
I think they are older Men At Arms images and might be . . .
m - French or Polish?
C - French
] - German
3 - British
Paratrooper (not reversed)
u - Japanese or Russian? (with anti-tank
rifle)
e -
Japanese in cap
3 - British Paratrooper
[ - German Paratrooper
o - US Marine?
8 - US GI?
= - US Marine or GI!
e - Japanese in cap (not reversed)
So that was that half-sorted! The silhouette
tank drawn next to them, which the two groups are following round the sides of the tin (with
a tank in) is a Soviet T54/55!
This is probably about twice the size
(around 1:35th), coming out of Japan and is the old Masudaya (Modern Toys)
version of what is - I think - another M41
Walker Bulldog, (not an 'M-12'!) also
battery-operated and also reduced to four road-wheels. Thanks to Jan Yarzembowski
for the image.
